Standing near the chain link fence at the outer perimeter of the airport, Lois gritted her teeth. No one would give her access to any secure areas; in point of fact the entire airport had been placed on lockdown, and she’d barely gotten out with her equipment intact.
Everyone was being close mouthed about the situation, but her contacts had informed her that the airplane would be approaching from this direction. All she could hope was that her equipment would be up to the task of getting some long distance shots.
The government had grounded all air traffic; consequently the usual news helicopters were nowhere to be seen. Given traffic, it would be an hour before the nearest news crew could make it through.
That meant that she had the exclusive, if she could get any video worth having. As a backpack journalist, Lois had everything she needed to send out a report at a moments notice.
Setting the Sony PD150 on a small tripod on the hood of her car, Lois grimaced as she stepped back and found her mark. The camera was half the weight and one tenth the cost of a camera used by professional news crews, and by day you couldn’t tell much difference. By night, the video images were grainy, which couldn’t be helped.
With the lights on, Lois began her report as quickly and concisely as she could. With the earpiece in her ear, she could hear and respond to questions from the CNN anchorman.
The sounds of the planes approaching alerted Lois, and she quickly moved to grab the camera.
Through the viewfinder everything took on a greenish tint. The commercial jet was being visibly flanked by two F-22 raptors. Lois frowned. F-16’s were more usually used for Washington security. The Raptors were stealth fighters.
She couldn’t hear the sounds of the commercial airplane, and even from this distance it should have been apparent.
If she had been allowed onto the public overlook area, she'd have had a much better angle, able to see the underside of the plane as it passed overhead. That area had been cordoned off, leaving Lois to watch everything happening from the side.
She squinted as she realized that she could see the silhouette of something hanging from beneath the plane as it passed by a light in the distance. Lois wasn’t sure if it was evidence of something badly wrong with the plane or what else it might be, but she’d go over the footage later. For the moment she was filming live.
There was something else wrong. The plane was stopping too fast, far faster than it should have been able to. It had been raining as recently as a few minutes before and the runway was undoubtedly slick. But instead of sliding thousands of feet, the plane was stopping unnaturally fast, in the space of a few hundred feet.
In the distance Lois could see a line of flashing lights as a police cars, ambulances and military vehicles converged on the airplane. They’d been situated near where the plane should have landed, nearly a mile further down the road.
Lois gasped as a sudden sound like thunder cracked near her, blotting out all other sounds. The wind of something passing by made her stagger, but a glance up in the air showed nothing.
Grimly, Lois continued to film and narrate.
***********
Clark grimaced as he flew. He’d hated having to fly so close to the woman with the camcorder; even though he hadn’t passed any closer than a thousand feet. Any nearer and he'd have risked causing hearing damage. He might have even shattered the glass in her car.
But from this position he had the plane between him and the approaching emergency vehicles, some of which had cameras he could see.
On the other side was a public overlook, which was also blocked off by police cars.
When had they begun putting cameras in police cars?
He wasn’t worried that the woman would film him; by the time the sound of his passage reached her he would be long gone. Given a choice he would have moved farther away before hitting full speed.
Cutting through the air, he slowed to flying under the speed of sound. At that speed he could fly almost soundlessly and without the risk of shattering all the windows in a neighborhood.
His ability to fly broke most of the laws of physics, but there were some even he had to follow. He flew so as to minimize his profile and reduce the sonic boom he created. If he had to, he could move his body so as to break up the shockwave. He always felt a little silly doing it, a little like he was having a seizure in midair, but it worked for the most part. If he hadn’t done it, he’d have shattered not only the windows in the woman’s car, but the windows in the airplane and everything else in a half mile radius.
Washington itself looked much like it had the last time he’d been there, except that there were now beige concrete planters blocking off Pennsylvania Avenue. Police cruisers were patrolling every intersection and he could see vans filled with officers and dogs in parking areas.
Where the street itself had once been was a wide swath of grass with twenty feet of pavement remaining on each side.
These weren’t the sort of changes that could have been made overnight. It was as though reality itself had been changed, with the bright world Clark had taken for granted being replaced by this new, darker version.
There were men with binoculars on the roof of the White House and the whole place was a beehive of activity.
It had only been a few years since Clark had taken his one visit to the White House as a tourist. In those days, parts of the White House had been open to almost anyone. President Garner had been adamant that the White House was the Peoples’ house.
A moment later he was gone. Washington was stirred up and didn’t seem safe. He needed to return to the scene of the crime.
He needed a closer look at Metropolis.
**************
They’d arrested every single person on the plane. Lois hadn’t seen anything like it. By her count, there were almost two hundred people being loaded into police wagons and taken away while men in Haz-Mat outfits entered the plane.
By the time the city affiliate reached the area, Lois was happy to turn over the screen time. There wasn’t much left to say at this point, and with the passengers all almost gone there wasn’t much of a story left here.
She waved wearily at the Network crew as she gathered up her equipment and placed it into the trunk of her car. Being a video journalist didn’t allow for the same kind of detail that doing newspaper work did, but it paid a great deal better. The network allowed her to do work for the Associated Press as long as they got the exclusives first.
The whole thing didn’t seem right to her. The plane had dropped unnaturally fast, and she hadn’t heard the sound of engines. It looked the same as any other airplane that should have been landing on the runway.
“Joe,” Lois said, moving toward the older man who was looking into a small compact mirror and checking his teeth while the cameramen set up their equipment.
“Lois,” he said, not taking his eyes from his own image. “Good reporting.”
“Do they have any idea where it comes from yet?”
He shook his head. “There isn’t a single missing plane anywhere. That’s a 747-400 series, and there have only been six hundred forty of them built worldwide. According to reports we’re getting from Homeland Security, they’ve all been accounted for.”
“Maybe it’s a modified 747-300 or something.”
The older reporter said, “The wings would be shorter.”
“Well, what could it be? It’s not like someone could manufacture an imitation commercial jetliner…I mean that’s a two hundred million dollar plane.”
“Drug dealers have been building home-made submarines since the mid-nineties.”
“World war one vintage…not anything like this!”
Shrugging, Joe snapped the compact into place. “Why do you think everyone is so worried?”
Lois nodded, and then stepped obediently back as the bright lights of the cameras switched on. She had to remind herself that she was no longer in Iraq. She was back home in America.
In Iraq, everyone had always been worried. Here, it was still a little new.
************
It was impossible.
Even with all his powers, there was no way Clark could have removed a city so seamlessly from the face of the earth. There should be signs of earth being filled back in, of the subway system, of the extensive underground excavation beneath the main city.
Hobbs bay was still there, and the contour of the land followed what he’d remembered, more or less. But somehow more than two hundred square miles of buildings and more than seven million people had simply vanished into thin air, as though they had never existed.
He rose into the night sky, slowly accelerating.
He’d long ago learned to navigate by the stars, by landmarks and by simple experience. Sometimes it was a simple matter of looking to see that New York was here and Gotham was there and…
It wasn’t just Metropolis. In the area where Gotham city had been was now only a cluster of small towns, islands of light in a pool of darkness that just shouldn’t have been there.
If towns were disappearing around the country, it wasn’t any wonder that people were suspicious. Maybe finding out that the plane was from Metropolis was ringing all sorts of alarms.
The enormity of it was overwhelming. His entire life had been in Metropolis. The Daily Planet, his apartment. His favorite baseball team. Lana.
Clark closed his eyes for a moment. At least Lana wouldn’t be worried about their missed dinner date.
The thought that she might be dead created a dull ache in his heart. She’d been his only friend in a time when he’d had no one.
Yet it had taken him almost an hour to even think about what might have happened to her. Had she been abducted by aliens? Had the whole city?
He wasn’t accustomed to feeling helpless, except in the context of his relationship with Lana.
Clark stared blindly off into the distance.
Despite having a woman who loved him, he’d always been a little disconnected from it all. Whether it was seeing what had happened to his parents when he was ten, or living through the foster care system, he’d always had a sense that part of him was broken inside. He loved Lana, as much as he loved anyone, but it was a shallow love.
He’d dreamed once of having something more, a deeper, more powerful emotion that would take his breath away and make his head spin. He’d wanted something like his parents had once had- passion that had grown into something even deeper. He’d wanted to be with someone who made him look forward to waking up the next day.
With Lana there had always been a little dread.
Now, though, he was utterly alone.
It began to rain again. His suit, which had dried with the passage of the wind, was immediately soaked again.
It was par for the course. The sounds of the wind and the rain were at least almost soothing, if he filtered out all the sounds of humanity below. The automobile noises alone would have driven him crazy if he hadn’t been able to filter it all away, much less the sounds of humanity. The sounds of people fighting, making love, making bodily noises. The conversations of seven million people as they went about their day.
Metropolis had been a living entity, a place with its own atmosphere, its own vibrant culture. It had been the one place he could see himself living, even if Lana had been the one to make the initial decision.
Allowing himself to make his way above the clouds, Clark sighed. His mind should have been racing with possibilities, trying desperately to find a connection, an explanation, something.
Instead, all he wanted to do was sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the wind and the rain. He felt exhausted suddenly, as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He didn’t hear the sonic boom from the missile until after it had already hit him.
